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Saturday, 20 September 2014

EU wins Scottish Referendum

I cry for my beloved country. The only winner is the EU hence Juncker & Barroso's delight at the result. It has solved the Catalan , Flemish and other nationalist problems for the EU at a stroke.. Step forward Cam, Milliband and Clegg to take the grateful thanks of their sacred EU. Charlemagne prize for the three amigos?

Alex Salmond may have lost this battle and exhausted, resigned the leadership, but his cause will triumph within ten years. Farage can never do what Salmond did and deliver an in/out referendum to the people of the UK.

The campaign and its aftermath was a sickening display of LibLabCon opportunism. Hence Cameron's immediate post result attempt to shaft Labour by tying the promised new powers for Scotland to giving similar powers to Wales, Northern Ireland and England. How on earth does he propose to implement the latter? There is no English parliament to give such powers to.

The LibDems are and have been irrelevant for years. As the Mail on Sunday wrote on Clegg some months ago, “His wife is Spanish, his mother Dutch, his father half-Russian and his spin doctor German. Is there ANYTHING British about Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg?”

Labour/Milliband are desperately trying to kick the issue into the long grass with their propsed consult the people (How?) constitutional conference lasting years to allow Ed a decent time in Downing Street to wreck the economy.

It was horrible to see Labour gleefully dancing to the Tories' tune. I quote from Owen Jones excellent piece in Wednesday's Daily Mail,

"Banks and other corporate giants warning that the roof will cave in; a near-hysterical media that leaves broad swaths of public opinion ignored – if the Labour leadership wants to know what to expect in the runup to next year’s election, they should regard the establishment campaign against Scottish independence as a foretaste of what is to come. But therein lies the problem, of course. Labour’s leaders have cheered on this campaign, and will be reminded of this fact at every opportunity when they complain of “scaremongering” when the same strategy is directed at them in the spring months of 2015."Labour will pay a heavy price for this and their inevitable failure to deliver on the Daily Record pledge.Labour have sold the moral high ground for a mess of cheap newspaper shots.

So why did Salmond lose the vote? Darling ran a FUD campaign, Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Negative and unpleasant and it is the favourite tool of Cameron's Aussie Crosby. Negative campaigning however works as has been shown in numerous elections round the world.Salmond could have neutralised this but his preparation was not good enough. There are two main reasons which better preparation could have reversed. I lean on Ashcrofts post election poll of 2000 voters on why No voters voted how they did.click on link belowhttp://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Lord-Ashcroft-Polls-Referendum-day-poll-summary-1409191.pdf
The pound/currency issue was cited by 57% of No voters as why they voted No. Nobody could stop an independent Scotlannd using the pound. The UK government extended this courtesy to the Irish for 50 years from 1927 until they entered the ERM. At the same time as the IRA were murdering UK soldiers! So Mr Darling why was it OK for the Irish but not the Scots?

There are few who understand how central banking works. Darling and Jonah Brown are not amongst them. Central bank's can create money to pay govenment debts in their own currency as the BoE is doing right now with its euphemistically entiled QE programme. But when there was a run on Northern Rock, the first such run on a UK bank for over 150 years it was HMT not the BoE that had to guarantee depositors cash and even then only up to £80k the previous limit had been a little known de facto £18k. So bank runs are very rare events and could have been avoided for Northern Rock by proper enforcement of banking regulations Rules that Jonah Brown waived for his sordid political ends.

The second part of the answer concerns a countries' reserves. Scotland has a lot of oil on which tax revenues accrue. You can securitise this secure revenue stream as bonds which could be sold or used as collateral internationally. This would give easily £50 bn ample to back Scottish banks but with proper regukation enforcement it would not be needed.

Pensions were cited by 37% of No voters. Central government pensions are like government debt a charge on HMT. Private pensions are paid from returns on sterling denominated securities. Pension contributions would continue to be made in Sterling which Scotland would be using as a currency.

Trickier would be police and local authority pensions which are unfunded and are paid out of rates revenue. Scottish Police and bureaucrats would just be in the same boat as everyone else and paid in Salmond's sterling.

Defence and security was cited by 29%. Easy get rid of nuclear weapons as have the Nordic countries and the problem disappears.

I have not considered issues like the NHS or other issues which were rated nore important by Yes voters than No voters.

That covers the most important policy points but there were also tactical reasons Salmond lost

They did not get their vote out particularly in their strong areas. Glasgow and Dundee only had a 75% turnout compared with the average 84%.

Brown's last minute intervention promising loads of goodies needed an immediate attack on Brow who created the UK debt mountain and was a disastrous PM

It should have been pointed out how much the EU would lose in fishing rights if Scotland was not allowed into the EU and that of course Scotland could join Norway in EFTA and us their trade deals.

Its all water under the bridge. On that day, 18th Sept 2014 Scotland was a sovereign nation. The pity is they chose to return power to the corrupt Westminster poilitical elite.

Nicola Sturgeon is an able, likeable woman. The cause will not die and Scotland will rise again. All Nicola has to do in the short term is to sit back and watch the 3 amigos fall out whilst the fourth horseman of the apocalypse, Jonah Brown drops them deeper in the mire.

Not just 1 Etonian, there are 7 in the Cabinet plus the mayor of London! I also count 3 members of the Buller. Seems a bit excessive for one school. Wee Eck did not seem to have any OEs all his lads and lassies went to state schools.

You also seem to forget that the media were almost entirely against Salmond with only one paper supporting Salmond. Thats the sort of odds public schoolboys like on their side when kicking the lower classes.

Julie Etchingham did a beautiful touching interview with an old Scootish Soldier aged 102 who had fought in the Western Desert during the war. He said he had been waiting alll his life for this opportunity to vote on his country's future. It would not have happened without Alec Salmond.

This is quite some nonsense, and if you lift off your blinkers, you'll find Niall Warry was being perfectly objective.

I'm sorry, but it's hard to believe that the piece above was written by an educated man - much less, one also as accomplished as yourself.

I am staggered the Yes vote was as high as 45% - it was nothing like that when I was there. "Braveheart" has an awful lot to answer for, and Billy Connolly had the best thing to say about it, although it was so laden with expletives, I'll spare you even the redacted version. He did NOT like it.

This phrase staggers me. "You also seem to forget that the media were almost entirely against Salmond with only one paper supporting Salmond. Thats the sort of odds public schoolboys like on their side when kicking the lower classes.

No. The reason the papers / media were against separation was because the idea was entirely half-arsed. Only 3 weeks before polling day, there was a discussion as to "which currency an independent Scotland should use."! Come off it Eric, you're an economist, what madness is this!? If they'd split, they'd have to apply and wait to join the EU - according to EU lawyers, so in the meantime they'd be stuck with the pound, with fiscal and monetary control governed by....the Bank of England. So what would have been independent about that? Nonsense on stilts.

You say that Scotland could just continue to use the pound; a lot of (knowledgeable and influential ) people had very severe doubts about his - did you see what happened to the pound just on the release of a 9 -point poll lead? I for one would have campaigned for 'Independence hour+1' to have every single defence or defence-related job moved south of Hadrian's Wall. I know people that would have petitioned the BBC to turn off the transmitters in that part of the country. The Scots enjoy a range of benefits all funded by the English taxpayers - countless academic studies and macro-economic models have proven this. But this....?

"They did not get their vote out particularly in their strong areas. Glasgow and Dundee only had a 75% turnout compared with the average 84%."Are you seriously suggesting that in those areas, if the turnout had been better it would have changed the result? - an addition 400,000 votes would have been needed to succeed! It was an absolutely historic 85% turnout - and you ask Niall Warry to be objective?!

Finally, the nasty, deeply racist nature of the Yes campaign was an utter disgrace. I must have 40 or 50 photos or video clips showing vandalised and defaced "No" signs, from all over the internet. Not one single defaced "Yes" sign was reported.

But Nicola Sturgeon's performance in that debate was disgraceful; she wasn't the slightest bit interested in listening to anyone else, and interrupted everyone as soon as they started to speak. A really rude woman. No wonder George Galloway was seen by many as winning that debate, even by people who don't like him.

As for the "reasons" to why the Independent s lost, I've never read such utter nonsense. One gibbering fool was perfectly happy to accept "50% +1 vote for a Yes result" when asked by one BBC interviewer, but later couldn't accept a 384,000 majority for "No".

We just need to move on now, and see what a mess the 3 parties make of the resulting process, butt English / Welsh / Ulster MPs are rightly concerned about what's going to happen. They will have to pay for it.

Toenail read what I wrote and try an give some facts to support your opinions. There were a number of reasons Salmond lost some policy, some management some media. It was the cumulative effect that did for Salmond.

Paul Mason the former BBC economics correspondent joined C4 and described the BBC's coverage as 'full propaganda' mode not seen since the Iraq war shambles dodgy dossiers et al.

You and the people you admire do not understand how central banks operate and their limits. Darling admitted there was nothing to stop an independent Scotland using the pound Sterling as its currency. In that he was correct. The drug's trade operates in US dollars. Why do the Yanks not stop this? Answer, they can't and besides the US Treasury makes a huge amount of money on the segnoirage they get on printing all these 100 dollar bills.

Try and come up with a few facts to support your arguments.

Fact there are 7 OEs in the cabinet

Fact there was only one paper supporting the Yes campaign

Fact the No campaign was supported by a bunch of fascist thugs in Glasgow photographed by a number of papers.

Fact the Irish Free State used sterling as a currency for almost 50 years before they entered the ERM whilst supporting the IRA murdering British soldiers.

Fact if the EU did not admit Scotland to the EU at Spain's behest they would lose over 20% of their fishing area. The country that would be hardest hit? Spain

Fact securitising revenue streams is a standard banking transaction

Fact Cameron is known as Flashman in the HoC.

Fact Flashman was the model public school bully in Tom Browne's Schooldays

Whilst the referendum question was about independence, it was never really on offer because Salmond was going for EU membership.

In his earlier days, he spent quite a bit of energy stirring up well justified rage against the Westminster government for its sacrifice of the the North Sea fishery as part of the the price of joining the EU.

Yet just across the North Sea is Norway - genuinely independent with full sovereignty over its waters and oil (something the EU would like to make a "common resource") and trading as freely as the UK in the Single Market.

He was not after independence but simply replacing Westminster-sub-Brussels with Holyrood-sub-Brussels. That, of course, would create a pretty massive portfolio of patronage positions for him to pay off political debts - and get inconvenient rivals contentedly feeding in the Brussels trough.

I thought the "no" campaign was pretty cringe-making but they could not attack Salmond's dishonesty because they are up to their necks in the samedeceit.

An honest referendum question would have been "Do you think the country now called the UK should be administered as one or two EU provinces?"

With my Scottish wife, I was glad and relieved that we returned from holiday to the same country we left.

Back in 1985 (I think) I had a premonition that the Conservative party had given up on Scotland. The words "and Unionist" disappeared from my membership card.

When I asked the agent about it, he said "They have their own party now" (referring to the Ulster Unionists who no longer took the Conservative whip after Maggie had given them a wet fish across the face with the Anglo-Irish agreement with Charlie Haughey).

I asked "What about Scotland?" and he looked at me with blank incomprehension and then gave me to understand that I should not concern myself with matters which my betters had decided.

I am temperamentally a unionist ( originally a Church & Crown Tory) but, if Mr Salmond had offered the Norway Option and I had been a Scottish resident, I would have been sorely tempted - in the hope that England would eventually catch up.

The bottom line as far as I'm concerned, and your tartan blinkers prevent you seeing this, is that Alex Salmond was really only after power for HIMSELF and while he is not an old Etonian he no less in this for what he can get out of it that the rest of our political elite.

Alex wanted to turn the clock back to a socialist republic very much IN the EU and you think that would have worked for Scotland then you are clearly letting your egalitarian Scottish heart rule your head!

The bottom line as far as I'm concerned, and your tartan blinkers prevent you seeing this, is that Alex Salmond was really only after power for HIMSELF and while he is not an old Etonian he is no less in politics for what he can get out of it than the rest of our political elite.

Alex wanted to turn the clock back to a socialist republic very much IN the EU and if you think that would have worked for Scotland then you are clearly letting your egalitarian Scottish heart rule your head!